A cavity containing a squeezed vacuum, developed at the California Institute of Tech in separate research. The University of Calgary and Tokyo Institute of Technology research uses a similar squeezed vaccum to store "less than nothing". (Source: California Institute of Technology)

On a silicon transistor scale, for the most part "on" or 1 means charged, and "off" or 0 means no charge. On a quantum scale, on still means a charge, but "off" or absence of light still produces a lesser amount of atomic noise. In other words, even if a photon is turned off, the quantum computer will still read a small amount of noise, disrupting measurements.

Scientists, after puzzling over this complex problem have come up with an outlandish solution -- creating a "squeezed vacuum" a space which has less than nothing, less noise than a space with no light. Scientists managed to store and retrieve this "perfect dark" quantum zero. The special vacuum is created by a laser beam directed through special crystals. Squeezed vacuums have previously been created but not stored. Typical uses are gravity wave detection.

Teams of physicists at the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology independently demonstrated that a squeezed vacuum can be stored in a collection of rubidium atoms and retrieved when necessary. The work appears in today's edition of the physics journal Physical Review Letters. In it the researchers detail how they verified that the space remained squeezed when retrieved, compared to no light.

Alexander Lvovsky, professor in the Department of Physics and
Astronomy, Canada Research Chair and leader of the University of Calgary's Quantum
Information Technology research group, stated, "Memory for light has been a big challenge in physics for many years and
I am very pleased we have been able to bring it one step further. It is important not only for quantum computers, but may also provide
new ways to make unbreakable codes for transmitting sensitive
information."

The team's research followed Harvard-Smithsonian scientists' 2001 work that slowed light to a stop and physicist Alexander Kuzmich of the Georgia Institute of Technology's work, which led to a successful 2006 effort to store and retrieve a photon. Kuzmich was enthusiastic about the new developments and said that the ability to squeeze space closer to an absolute zero in terms of noise promises to significantly aid in the development of quantum networks. He marveled at the work and said of the progress, "It's a real technical achievement."

Lvovsky’s team next hopes to develop storage methods for more complex forms of light, such as entangled light, which can lead to exotic new uses and improvements in quantum computing.

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I agree. I love DT, but they have to stick to things with a little more consumer value. All the military stuff is cool, but other than that, it has to tie into some sort of tangible product or possibility of a product for the consumer.

Exactly, it is dumbed down. And it's still so new, no one even gets it. So what's the point of reporting something like that? I'll admit, I like how it is centered around technology possibilities, but it is still too new for many of us to appreciate.

Oh they have surely heard the word quantum, but wouldn't have the faintest of ideas what the actual physics term means. Instead, they hear words like 'quantum' used in all manners of bullshit product marketing having nothing to do with reality.

It's actually very sad and pathetic how bad the level of public scientific literacy is in the USA. At the same time I feel incredibly angry and frustrated that there is not more real focus on the problem. Instead, the population stays incredibly stupid and ignorant. Oh how the empire is crumbling....

Generally speaking I agree that kids are socially promoted out of high school despite barely being able to read in some cases, but.. seriously.. Quantum physics needn't be taught in high school, or for the vast majority of college majors. That crosses the line in to specialized information that 99% of us will never need to know, will never find a practical use for, and will never care about except, potentially, out of curiosity. For those people there is Discovery Channel -- though I've slowly watched channels like Discovery get dumbed down over the years.

As an aside, I just read the graduation statistics for Detroit area high schools again today. My god. Detroit needs to be kicked out of the nation, perhaps given to Canada. Maybe just used for nuclear testing. It's a third world country. It's worse than many third world countries. If one read articles about it and replaced "Detroit" with "Zimbabwe", one would just nod their head and say "no surprise."

I agree. Until I see a prototype at a tech show, I'm not sold. I understand you have to start somewhere, but I don't need to know the history of something that will hit mainstream in 2020. Just my opinion.

Spartacus? When you mentioned nutshell I thought of Austin Powers:No, this is me in a nutshell: "Help! I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this bloody great big nutshell? What kind of shell has a nut like this?"

> "Spartacus who ironic you name yourself after a people that disdained almost all forms of learning except warfare. "

Eh? Your history is a bit off. Spartacus was a Roman slave, the leader of history's most famous slave revolt. You're thinking of the Spartans, who were several centuries earlier and several hundred miles away.

quote: > "Spartacus who ironic you name yourself after a people that disdained almost all forms of learning except warfare. "

Eh? Your history is a bit off. Spartacus was a Roman slave, the leader of history's most famous slave revolt. You're thinking of the Spartans, who were several centuries earlier and several hundred miles away.

I believe the parent was trying to imply that Spartacus was named after the Spartans. This is a reasonable conjecture given the similarity of the names, however, probably not the case as Spartan is the Anglicized version of the Greek name, while Spartacus was actual name of the individual.

One more stepping stone on the way to quantum entanglement, quantum teleportation, quantum logic gates ...

The fact that scientists can store and retrieve "nothing" means we've successfully found a way to create a binary computer on the sub atomic scale.

The smallest practical size we can store a one and a zero is a few nanometers via exotic memory structures. The smallest experimental size we could store binary one and zero are a few atoms. With this, we're talking about storing binary one and zero on sub atomic scales.

Interestingly, this sort of debunks Rudy Rucker's thoughts on singularity: that we could not simulate "virtual" reality because it takes many atoms to simulate reality as it would to replicate it. Not true when we can store information on the sub atomic scale.

Kristopher, it's nice to be optimistic but this isn't going to happen.

You know every few weeks, for the last two decades or so I've been an adult, there's an article in the paper that claims researchers have all but cured cancer. Yet Patrick Swayze's still gonna die.

It's kinda the same thing with quantum computing, you can bury me in articles saying it's just around the corner, buit I've been reading those for the last decade. It's kinda put up or shut up time now.

Honestly I dont think quantum computers are possible. And I even have my doubts whether quantum physics is a reality. That's just my opinion. My opinion could be proved wrong (maybe) by a true quantum computer becoming reality. But since that never seems to happen, I kinda suspect I'm right.

As posted by others, we already have quantum computers -- they're just only capable of 16 qubits or less.

Quantum mechanics is not a believe or disbelieve thing, though Einstein himself believed the odd things that occur on the subatomic could be explained away with classical physics. Of course, if those odd things didn't occur, we wouldn't have a lot of neat stuff like the laser.

But whether you want to say that quantum mechanics doesn't make sense, or that it's not possible, the effects are still measurable and exploitable. And this has been demonstrated with people who've designed rudimentary quantum computers -- D-Wave.

quote: Interestingly, this sort of debunks Rudy Rucker's thoughts on singularity: that we could not simulate "virtual" reality because it takes many atoms to simulate reality as it would to replicate it. Not true when we can store information on the sub atomic scale.